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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the
Great Lakes Region, 1783-1870
Carl Benn
Introduction
The history of Toronto harbour and the defence of the Great Lakes region has two main
elements. First, various military planners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
perceived merit in establishing a naval base at Toronto, although for the most part they
were unable to fulfil their goals. Second, debate on Toronto's potential always occurred
within a broader discussion of the region's strategic requirements. This paper w i l l explore
these two themes from the end of the American Revolution, when the British first took
an interest in Toronto's naval potential, to 1870, when imperial forces withdrew from
central Canada.
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1783-1806
British authorities began to explore Toronto's naval prospects in the 1780s at about the
same time that they purchased territory in the region from the Mississaugas. . But no
action was taken until 1793, when the threat of war with the United States led Colonel
John Graves Simcoe, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, to build Fort York
preparatory to constructing a naval base and dockyard at Toronto.
The main flashpoint in the Anglo-American crisis was the area north of the Ohio
River (figure 1), where tribes such as the Shawnee, Ottawa, Delaware, and Wyandot,
fought US efforts to seize their territory. Britain was implicated in this war, partly because
it had failed to evacuate a number of forts on American soil after the end of the American
Revolution (figure 2). Known as the "Western Posts," these included Michilimackinac,
Detroit, Niagara, and Oswego. Although the British wanted to avoid war, it used the
Western Posts as bases for agents to support the natives, in hopes that a tribal success
would lead to the creation of a native homeland independent of the US and friendly to
Britain. American hostility towards Britain grew to crisis proportions after the tribes
inflicted devastating defeats upon two US armies in 1790 and 1791.
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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
Figure 2:
Fort Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River, was the strongest of the Western
Posts. Some of the vessels of the British Provincial Marine can be seen in this c. 17821796 watercolour.
Source:
Courtesy of the Old Fort Niagara Association.
The British government in 1791 appointed Simcoe to his post in the front line
province of Upper Canada, and he arrived in the colony the next year. During this time,
Simcoe identified three main concerns about the defence of his backwoods domain. First,
the Lake Ontario naval headquarters at Kingston was vulnerable to assault, particularly
in winter when the Americans could cross the frozen St. Lawrence and launch a surprise
attack. Losing control of Lake Ontario could be disastrous for Upper Canadian defence
because it was the central component of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes communications
lifeline to the rest of the British Empire. Second, Lake Erie was the main water
connection with the Detroit frontier and Britain's aboriginal allies, but in wartime it could
be interdicted easily. Third, small garrisons guarding the Western Posts were military and
political liabilities. Militarily, the deteriorating forts with their inadequate resources could
be defeated one- at a time by the American army. Politically, Simcoe saw the British
occupation of the posts as "an object of Jealousy of the Government of the United States"
which could initiate the direct Anglo-American confrontation he hoped to avoid.
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To solve these problems, Simcoe recommended replacing the Western Posts with
a network of defences within British territory. Three naval bases were to be cornerstones:
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one on Georgian Bay, a second on Lake Erie at Long Point, and a third on Lake Ontario
at Toronto. As well, he wanted to build border forts along the Detroit, Niagara and St.
Lawrence Rivers. Simcoe also hoped to develop a provincial capital at London, a location
he thought could govern the interior of the continent beyond the Detroit River to Britain's
advantage should the western tribes ultimately carve out a homeland there. Finally, he saw
a road network as essential to tie these points together and to reduce reliance on the Great
Lakes for communications.
The naval base at Toronto was the central component in this plan. Toronto had
a good, defensible harbour which could be protected by shore batteries. If fortified, it
could not only control Lake Ontario but also serve as the anchor of the "Toronto Passage"
— a water and portage route between Lake Ontario and the proposed post on Georgian
Bay. The Toronto Passage might prove valuable in maintaining communication with the
upper lakes and the Detroit region if southwestern Upper Canada or Lake Erie fell into
enemy hands. Moreover, Simcoe believed that Toronto's site away from the border would
make surprise attack difficult. Further, he reasoned that since spring came earlier to
Toronto than to Kingston, the Provincial Marine would be able to get onto the lake about
two weeks earlier. Finally, Toronto was ideally situated to support military efforts on the
Niagara Peninsula since it was only fifty kilometres from Niagara by water.
Given the limited resources available, these were long-term objectives predicated
on a resolution of the American war with the aboriginal peoples which might include
dismantling the Western Posts rather than transferring them to the U S . This was important
to give the British a head start in fortifying their side of the border. Unfortunately, the
international situation worsened in 1793, leading Simcoe to jettison most of his defensive
plans to concentrate on the need for a good naval facility to meet the challenges posed
by what seemed like an impending American invasion.
The already poor Anglo-American relations deteriorated further with the outbreak
of the Anglo-French war in Europe in February 1793. France attempted to persuade the
Americans to invade Canada, and dispatched secret agents to the Great Lakes to
undermine the alliance between the British and the natives and to preach sedition among
French-Canadians. At the same time, Pennsylvanians built a post south of Lake Erie
preparatory to creating a naval station to challenge British supremacy. In Vermont,
influential adventurers arranged for thousands of weapons to be sent from France for an
invasion of Lower Canada. In New York, settlers and redcoats exchanged shots outside
Oswego. Most ominously, an American army under Major-General Anthony Wayne
marched towards the centre of the native confederacy south of Detroit. British officials
saw this army as a serious threat and expected it to try to cross the Detroit River and
invade Upper Canada.
Faced with these dangers,-Simcoe surveyed the Toronto region in May 1793, just
after he learned of the outbreak of war with France, and moved to Toronto in July with
the Queen's Rangers, who began to construct a garrison on the present site of Historic
Fort York. Creating a fortified naval base at Toronto was crucial because he believed
Detroit and Niagara were indefensible. General Wayne could easily capture Detroit; with
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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
a fleet of batteaux and other vessels he could then transport his army across Lake Erie,
march across the Niagara peninsula, and take Fort Niagara. Within a few weeks half of
Upper Canada could be lost. With the fall of Niagara, there was nothing to stop Wayne
from sailing across Lake Ontario to Kingston unless Toronto were defended. If fortified,
Simcoe felt confident that the army and Provincial Marine could launch an effective
challenge to regain control of the Niagara Peninsula and the west, assuming that his
Lower Canadian compatriots maintained supply lines between Upper Canada and the rest
of the empire.
In 1793 Toronto harbour was a long bay which could be defended at its mouth
(figure 3). Simcoe wanted to build two defensive works at the entrance, one on the south
side at Gibraltar Point and another to the north, where Fort York now stands. The naval
arsenal was to be located securely on the north side, two kilometres east of Fort York. To
supply foodstuffs, goods, and labour to the Provincial Marine, Simcoe laid out a town and
began to recruit settlers.". Because of the war scare, he also began to move the Upper
Canadian capital from the exposed border town of Niagara to Toronto as a temporary
stopgap until London could be developed. In August Simcoe baptized his little community
"York."
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Figure 3: Toronto Bay in 1793.
Source:
Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada, NMC-21768.
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But Simcoe's grand plans for York were to remain unfulfilled because he could
not obtain permission from his superiors to fortify Toronto. The governor-in-chief of all
British North America, Guy Carleton, Baron Dorchester, was on leave when Simcoe
moved to York, so Simcoe asked the acting governor, Major-General Sir Alured Clarke,
for consent to develop the settlement. While Clarke authorized the establishment of
Toronto as a civil measure to safeguard the capital, he balked at the more costly
construction of a military post without Dorchester's approval. Upon his return to
Canada, Lord Dorchester flatly rejected the request. There were three things wrong with
York in Dorchester's mind. First, the colony's military force was too small to support an
additional post. Second, he believed that resources should be applied to maintaining a
strong position at or near Kingston to cover the vulnerable St. Lawrence supply route into
Upper Canada. Third, he thought York too isolated from more established settlements and
sources of supply in Lower Canada to meet the requirements of a naval force.
Dorchester's disapproval meant that Simcoe could not use military funds to develop York
because he could not get it designated as an official army post. Therefore, no fortifications
capable of guarding a naval facility to fulfil broad strategic objectives could be built.
Instead, in his capacity as civil governor of Upper Canada, Simcoe had access only to the
more limited funds of the provincial treasury, which he used to erect barracks with minor
defences for the local function of protecting the temporary capital.
Over the winter of 1793-1794, the frontier crisis continued to escalate and
Dorchester came to believe that war with the Americans was inevitable. As a result, he
ordered Simcoe to re-construct an old fort one hundred kilometres south of Detroit to
prevent Wayne's army from reaching the border. Fort Miamis, deep within territory the
British had conceded to the US at the end of the Revolution, thus became Canada's
forward defensive position. Its supply link was the Maumee River, which the British
controlled with two gunboats, Brazen and Spitfire; a number of small vessels operating
out of Detroit; and a defended post at Turkey Island at the mouth of the Maumee on Lake
Erie.
In August 1794, the Americans defeated the western tribes at Fallen Timbers, a
few kilometres from Fort Miamis, and followed their victory by surrounding the fort and
demanding its surrender. The commandant rejected the summons; during several tense
days when the Americans probed its defences, the British stood firm. In the end, the
Americans decided not to attack the well-entrenched post and withdrew south. Diplomats
later negotiated the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation (Jay's Treaty), and the
next year the defeated tribes agreed to the Treaty of Greenville, in which they ceded much
of Ohio and other territory to the Americans. Elsewhere, the Vermont invasion never
occurred: the Royal Navy captured the Olive Branch carrying the Vermonters' weapons
from France to America. French secret agents failed to foment revolution in Lower
Canada or to turn the natives against the British, and Pennsylvania never established its
Lake Erie naval base.
In partial fulfilment of Jay's Treaty, the British evacuated the Western Posts in
1796 in return for some American concessions, in the process defusing the remaining
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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
crisis point at Fort Oswego, where American settlers and British soldiers had been
shooting at one another. With this move, York's place in Upper Canada was secured, not
as a naval station but as the provincial capital. Plans to relocate the seat of government
to London were abandoned and the move from Niagara to York between 1796 and 1798
got the colony's offices and legislature out from under the guns of the new American
garrison at Fort Niagara.
There was some government shipbuilding in the Toronto area even though the
main naval post remained at Kingston. By the end of the century, the British had built
three gunboats, a batteau, scow and, largest of all, the Toronto, a small government
schooner, on the banks of the Humber, a few kilometres west of Toronto harbour and well
outside the area that John Graves Simcoe had designated for his fortified naval base.
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1807-1814
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The treaties of 1794 and 1795 did not lead to long-term peace on the Great Lakes. In
1811 war flared between the western tribes and the US when the latter launched a military
strike at Tippecanoe. A year later the United States declared war on Great Britain. War
had been expected since at least 1807, and military officials had renewed the old debates
on the relative merits of York versus Kingston as naval stations. This time the arguments
favoured York. Increased settlement since the 1790s led some military planners
optimistically to believe that the necessary supplies and labour for shipbuilding could be
obtained locally. Strategists also thought York was a good site because the commander-inchief of Upper Canada normally lived in the capital and could keep a professional eye on
the dockyard's operations if it were located in the town. The main problem with York was
that it was not fortified sufficiently to protect a primary naval post. To remedy this,
Major-General Isaac Brock began the process of upgrading York's defences in 1811."
Because the bulk of the province's dockyard and other naval resources were in
Kingston, the governor-in-chief, Sir George Prevost, decided to move the naval
establishment to York gradually as the capital's capacity to house and defend naval
facilities improved and as Kingston's dockyards decayed. There was, however, an
immediate need to expand shipbuilding. Therefore, in January 1812 Prevost ordered the
construction of a sixteen-gun, 128-tonne schooner, Prince Regent, at York. Completed in
June, much of its metal work came from an old vessel wrecked on the south side of the
harbour earlier in the century, perhaps presaging some of York's limits at supplying
material for naval construction.
Anglo-American relations degenerated too quickly to move the dockyards from
Kingston before hostilities commenced. York therefore played only a secondary role in
the naval defence of Upper Canada.-Whatever aspirations existed to turn York into the
province's main naval base died when the Americans captured the town in two of their
three attacks on the provincial capital. This was in marked contrast to US reluctance even
to attempt a serious assault on well-defended Kingston. As well, wartime exigencies led
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to an expansion of Kingston's naval facilities and defences, helping to solidify its role as
Upper Canada's main naval base.
The first attack on York in April 1813 had serious consequences for Canadian
defence because the British lost both a new frigate meant to bolster the Lake Ontario
squadron and a large quantity of naval supplies desperately required by the Lake Erie
fleet. The frigate, Sir Isaac Brock, had been designed to carry twenty-six thirty-twopounder carronades and four long eighteen-pounder guns. At the time of the battle, the
Brock sat on the stocks in the naval dockyard (near today's Union Station); the British
burned it before evacuating the town after their defeat in the Battle of York. The Brock
was almost finished and would have given the British a significant advantage in the naval
war on Lake Ontario. Ironically, it was supposed to have been completed several weeks
earlier and to have sailed to the relative safety of Kingston, but construction had been
delayed, in part because of disagreements between the shipbuilder and government
officials and partly because of supply problems caused by York's relative isolation. The
loss of the Brock made it difficult to challenge the Americans on Lake Ontario or to ferry
supplies to beleaguered forces on the Niagara Peninsula who, along with their native
allies, suffered severe shortages in the following months. The British also torched some
naval stores destined for Lake Erie when they retreated; the Americans captured the rest.
The loss of these supplies was a major factor in the defeat of the British Lake Erie
squadron in September 1813, which was followed by the loss of southwestern Upper
Canada for the duration of the war. Yet because the Americans only occupied Toronto for
six days after the first attack and two after the second, the British were able to utilize the
Toronto Passage to keep supply lines open to the upper lakes, despite the fall of Lake
Erie. This allowed them to hold Fort Mackinac, which had been captured in 1812, and
to keep supplies flowing across Lakes Huron and Michigan to their tribal allies in the
north and west.
After the second attack in July 1813, the British began to build new defences at
York. Today's Fort York, on the site Simcoe chose for a shore battery and garrison in
1793, dates from this time. The third attack on York occurred in August 1814, but the
harbour defences were strong enough to deter the American squadron. The rebuilding of
these fortifications was important because a four-vessel squadron operated out of Toronto
Bay in support of British forces on the Niagara Peninsula in 1814. Commanded by
Captain Alexander Dobbs, R N , the squadron ferried supplies and troops to Niagara and
brought wounded and exhausted soldiers back to York. Without the defences, vessels at
York would have been vulnerable and their loss would have been disastrous, since it
would have forced the British to rely for supply on the 125 kilometres of miserable roads
between York and Niagara instead of the fast water route across the lake.
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1815-1870
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Following the successful defence of Canada during the War of 1812, military planners on
both sides of the border agreed on why the US failed to conquer the province: the
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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
Americans did not sever the St. Lawrence River supply line by capturing either Kingston
or Montreal. One droll British strategist wrote that "in the conduct of the three campaigns,
a most wonderful deficiency of military knowledge and judgment, had been displayed on
the part of the American generals." The humour, however, was lost by the perception
on both sides, best articulated by John Quincy Adams, that the Treaty of Ghent which
ended the war was merely "a truce rather than a peace."
In anticipation of future hostilities, the British concentrated defence construction
in the exposed St. Lawrence region, upgrading fortifications south of Montreal to stop an
attack along the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River route. In Kingston, the army replaced
the 1812-era defences with a massive citadel in the 1830s, and further strengthened the
harbour in the 1840s with a number of Martello towers and other works during the
Oregon Boundary Dispute. Most ambitious was the Rideau Canal, built as an alternate
water route. With these works, the British hoped supply lines could be kept open and
reinforcements dispatched to Upper Canada quickly to retake any territory lost in the
central or western portions of the province in the early stages of a war. Military strategists
in the post-war era saw two roles for York. First, it was a position which could either
cover a retreating army from the Niagara Peninsula or serve as a rallying point for the
defence of that region. Second, it could protect communications along the Toronto
Passage with posts on Georgian Bay and the upper Great Lakes, such as Penetanguishene
and Drummond Island.
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To a large degree, the period after the War of 1812 was an anti-climax in
Toronto's naval history, although strategists continued to plan for its defence throughout
the remainder of the century. In the 1820s, for example, Sir James Carmichael Smyth of
the Royal Engineers hoped to replace Fort York with a "large and substantial Earthen
Redoubt...having a fortified Keep within it, similar to...Fort Wellington in the Netherlands." Sir James wanted new defences because he thought Fort York was only capable
of serving as a harbour defence. But with improved settlement and roads, the Americans
were no longer completely dependent upon water transportation to reach York; new works
capable of meeting new challenges — along with the old — were needed. In 1856, the
army developed plans to build either Martello towers or a floating battery on the lake side
of the peninsula because of fears that the Americans could bombard the city and harbour
from afar with new forms of artillery. If necessary, the army also expected to sink ships
in the channel to prevent the enemy from steaming quickly past the defences in armed
steamers. In 1871, Canadian military planners still hoped to build Martello towers on the
Toronto islands and in 1888 they wanted to place mobile batteries of heavy guns in the
city to meet any threat the Americans might pose to the province's largest port. In all
these cases, no action was taken because the political will did not exist to spend the
necessary money in peacetime. There were, however, two occasions when interest in the
city's naval potential revived with tangible results: the Rebellion Crisis of 1837-1841 and
the period of the American Civil War, the Trent Affair, and the Fenian Raids in the
1860s.
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Figure 4: This 1842 plan shows Fort York with its harbour battery enlarged as a result of the
Rebellion Crisis. Other improvements also were made to the defences of the 1813-1815
period fort because of the tensions of the late 1830s. However, ambitious plans to build
a citadel comparable to those at Halifax, Kingston, and Quebec to protect Toronto at
that time were not implemented.
Source:
Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada, C-137340.
Most people think of the Upper Canadian Rebellion in terms of William Lyon
Mackenzie's comic-opera attack on Toronto in December 1837. What is less well known
is that there were serious border raids along the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence system in 1838
which, in combination with other problems, kept the province on a wartime footing until
1841. In Toronto, a guarded coal-storage facility was built at the government wharf for
a number of armed steamboats acquired to protect Lake Ontario during the crisis. As well,
harbour and landward defences were upgraded, although not as substantially as military
planners had hoped (figure 4). Much of the thinking behind these improvements
stemmed from the expectation that Toronto would be an important naval base if the
Rebellion Crisis led to an Anglo-American war.
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11
During the 1860s war with the US again seemed likely and in 1862 the Royal
Engineers quickly modernized Toronto's harbour battery at Fort York in the wake of the
Trent Affair by installing seven eight-inch shell guns at the fort and other guns near the
mouth of the harbour. Defence planners in the 1860s thought the best way to protect
Canada was to combine a strong defence with naval counterattacks on the American
Atlantic seaboard from Royal Navy bases in Halifax, Bermuda, and the West Indies.
Concerned about the possibility of defending Canada, the British ordered LieutenantColonel William Jervois of the Royal Engineers to prepare a secret report on colonial
defence. Jervois was too pessimistic for the politicians, even suggesting that Canada might
be indefensible in the face of the huge Civil War armies the Americans had created.
Ordered to reconsider his findings, in a second report he suggested that strong
fortifications were needed because British and Canadian forces would be outnumbered
badly in a war. If strong enough, these forts might hold out through a campaigning season
until cold weather forced the Americans to lift their sieges. By holding out, the local
defenders could buy time for reinforcements to be sent from Britain both to preserve
Canada and to attack the American coastal states. If such attacks were sufficiently severe,
the British assumed they could demand the return of any conquered Canadian territory as
part of a peace settlement.
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Jervois recommended that either London, Hamilton, or Toronto be fortified for
the defence of Canada West. He seems to have provided three choices to win support
from politicians representing the different communities, with the hard choice of a
particular locale to be determined after the easier decision to re-fortify had been made.
Of the three, Toronto was most desirable in Jervois' thinking. He saw a re-fortified
Toronto as admirably suited for a secondary naval base, as a rallying point for troops, and
as the gateway to protecting the upper lakes along the route of the old Toronto Passage
- attitudes comparable to Simcoe's seventy years earlier. Unlike York in the 1790s,
however, Toronto in the 1860s was a major urban centre with a population of 50,000
capable of meeting many needs of a military force, and was the hub of an important
railway and steamship network with good communications to other strategic points. To
fortify Toronto, Jervois recommended building earthworks around the entire city;
exploiting the defensive potentials of the deep Humber and Don River valleys, which
guarded the city's eastern and western approaches; creating both permanent and mobile
batteries at key locations (equipped in part with modern, large-calibre, rifled guns); and
erecting a massive harbour battery one kilometre west of Fort York along with two
Martello towers on the Toronto islands (figure 5). But these plans were never implemented and the end of the C i v i l War and the rapid demobilization of most of the Union
Army saw a return of peaceful Anglo-American relations and a loss of interest in
Toronto's naval potential.
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Figure 5: Jervois' proposed defences for Toronto in the 1860s included two Martello Towers (the
two dots on the islands), a heavy shore battery (the short dark line near the mouth of
the harbour), and a ring of earthworks around the landward approaches to the city (the
broken lines).
Source:
Courtesy of the Devon County Council Archives, U.K.
Conclusion
In 1870 the British government transferred Toronto's defences to the three-year-old
Dominion of Canada. While this analysis ends at this point, it should be noted that
Canadian forces maintained Toronto's harbour defences until the 1880s. But in the
earlier period, much of the naval history of pre-Confederation Toronto was a story of
failed aspirations and debate characterized by broad discussions of the defensive
requirements of the Great Lakes as a whole. Between the 1790s and the 1860s,
particularly during crises, military planners assumed Toronto could play a central role in
the naval defence of the Great Lakes. In every case, command decisions by others, or
enemy action, or frugal politicians, or the passing of a crisis, resulted in Toronto playing
a smaller — but not inconsequential — role in Great Lakes defence than anticipated.
Finally, the naval history of colonial Toronto, introduced in this article, is an important
part of the broader topics of both British North American defence and the history of
Toronto harbour.
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Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
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NOTES
* An earlier version of this paper was presented
at the annual meeting of the Canadian Nautical
Research Society in Toronto in May 1993. Carl
Benn is a full-time curator at Fort York and a parttime history instructor at the University of Toronto.
His most recent book is Historic Fort York, 17931993 (Toronto, 1993), and he is currently completing a study of the Iroquois in the War of 1812.
1. A major motivation behind this was the
absence of studies examining Toronto's naval
history. Although bits and pieces of other works
make passing reference to this topic, my recent
book, Historic Fort York, 1793-1993 (Toronto,
1993) is the only general study of Toronto's
colonial military history available. The most
important broad work on this period is J. Mackay
Hitsman, Safeguarding Canada, 1763-1871
(Toronto, 1968).
2. National Archives of Canada (NAC), Record
Group (RG) 8, C Series, British Military Records,
CCCLXXXI, Instructions to Gother Mann, 29 May
1788: "You will examine the mouth of the French
River and that of River Matchadosh upon Lake
Huron, likewise Toronto...and give every information how they will answer for shipping, and of
what size; whether the Country adjacent is propitious for Settlements, and if these, by the nature of
the ground, can at small expense be defended."
3. The Province of Upper Canada consisted
mainly of modern-day Ontario south of the Hudson
Bay watershed.
4. For a complete discussion of the frontier crisis
as it affected Toronto, see Carl Benn, "The Military Context of the Founding of Toronto," Ontario
History,LXXXl (1989). For an alternate interpretation, see Malcolm Macleod, "Fortress Ontario or
Forlorn Hope? Simcoe and the Defence of Upper
Canada," Canadian HistoricalReview,Ull (1972).
A good military history of the Ohio Valley conflict
by an American historian is Wiley Sword, President Washington's Indian War, 1790-1795 (Norman, OK, 1985). A book which covers the story
from a native-centred perspective is Gregory Evans
Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American
Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore,
1992), esp. chaps. V-VI.
5. E.A. Cruikshank (ed.), The Correspondence of
Lieut. Governor John Graves Simcoe, with Allied
Documents Relating to His Administration of the
Government of Upper Canada [hereafter Simcoe
Papers](5 vols., Toronto, 1923-1931), I, 339-343,
John Graves Simcoe to Sir Alured Clarke, 31 May
1793.
6. Ibid., I, 144, Simcoe to Henry Dundas, 28
April 1792; I, 18, Simcoe to Sir Joseph Banks, 4
January 1791; II, 67, Simcoe to the Duke of Richmond, 23 September 1793.
7. Ibid., JJ, 57, Simcoe to Dundas, 20 September
1793; III, 42, Simcoe to Baron Dorchester, 5
September 1794; I, 173, Simcoe and Alexander
McKee to George Hammond, 1792; and I, 343:
Simcoe to Clarke, 31 May 1793.
8.
Ibid., I, 338, Simcoe to Clarke, 31 May 1793.
9.
Ibid., I, 338-339, 343.
10. Today, Fort York sits nine hundred metres
inland because of lakefill operations between the
1850s and the 1920s rather than on the waterfront
as it did before the mid-nineteenth century.
11. Simcoe Papers, 1,283-287, Simcoe to Dundas,
21 June 1794.
12. The province changed the name back to
"Toronto" in 1834 when it incorporated the town
as a city.
13. Simcoe Papers, I, 355, Clarke to Simcoe, 14
June 1793.
14. Ibid., II, 136-137, Dorchester to Simcoe, 27
January 1794. Simcoe acknowledged that there
probably were no more than fifteen families of
settlers between Burlington Bay and the Bay of
Quinte, a distance of two hundred kilometres. John
14
Andre, Infant Toronto as Simcoe's Folly (Toronto,
1967), 37.
15. Simcoe Papers, I, 355, Clarke to Simcoe, 14
June 1793; II, 63, Simcoe to Dundas, 20 September 1793.
16. Ibid., II, 179-180, Simcoe to Dorchester, 14
March 1794; II, 292, Dorchester to Simcoe, 23
June 1794; II, 211, Simcoe to Richard England, 18
April 1794; II, 238, England to Simcoe, 19 May
1794; and II, 246 and III, 13-14, "Report of British
Deserter John Bevan," c. 21 August 1794.
17. Carl Benn, The King's Mill on the Humber,
1793-1803 (Etobicoke, 1979), passim.
18. Important works related to this section of the
paper include Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War
of 1812 (1882, repr. Annapolis, MD, 1987); C P .
Stacey, The Battle of Little York (Toronto, 1971);
and Carl Benn, The Battle of York (Belleville,
1984). See also the essays by Stacey, Hitsman,
Winton-Clare, Humphries and Preston in Morris
Zaslow (ed.), The Defended Border (Toronto,
1964). A good general history of the war is J.
Mackay Hitsman, The Incredible War of 1812
(Toronto, 1965). A competent bibliographic work
on the War of 1812 is John C. Fredriksen (comp.),
Free Trade and Sailors' Rights: A Bibliography of
the War of 1812 (Westport, CT, 1985), esp. 104105.
19. William S. Dudley (ed.), The Naval War of
1812 (Washington, DC, 1985), 268-273, A.H. Pye
to Sir George Prevost, 7 December 1811; and
Edith G. Firth (ed.), The Town of York 1793-1815
(Toronto, 1962), 78-80, Andrew Gray's "Report
Upon the Expediency of Removing the Marine
Establishment from Kingston to York," 12 March
1812.
20. Firth (ed.), The Town of York, 80, Noah Freer
to Isaac Brock, 27 April 1812; and C. WintonClare, "A Shipbuilder's War," in Zaslow (ed.), The
Defended Border, 167, 169.
21. Firth (ed.), The Town of York, 288-289, Ralph
Bruyeres to Prevost, 28 January 1813.
The Northern Mariner
22. The most useful works which study the
broader military history of colonial Canada in the
post-1815 period are Kenneth Bourne, Britain and
the Balance of Power in North America, 1815-1908
(London, 1967); and Charles P. Stacey, Canada
and the British Army, 1846-1871: A Study in the
Practice of Responsible Government (rev. ed.,
Toronto, 1963).
23. NAC, RG 8, Series II, VII, Military Memoir
of the Province of Canada by Capt. W., 26 July
1856.
24. Quoted in Boume, Britain and the Balance of
Power, 9.
25. NAC, RG 8, DXIV, "Report on the State of
Fortifications and Military Buildings in Upper and
Lower Canada," 20 November 1816.
26. Firth (ed.), The Town of York, 18, Smyth
Report on Defence, 1826.
27. Ibid.; and NAC, NMC-23140, "Plan of a
Pentagonal Fort Containing a Casemated Fortified
Barracks for 200 Men Proposed to be Constructed
at York U.C.," 20 November 1827. Fort Wellington, built outside Ostend during the Napoleonic
Wars, mounted forty-six cannon but required a
relatively small garrison for defence. A similar fort
in Toronto could only have been taken through a
lengthy siege which would have given the British
time to dispatch reinforcements to the provincial
capital. Fort York, on the other hand, might not
have been able to hold out against a determined
enemy freed from the constraints imposed by
dependence upon Lake Ontario to keep its supply
lines open.
28. NAC, RG 8, Series II, VII, Military Memoir
of the Province of Canada, 26 July 1856. Storms
and erosion separated the peninsula from the
mainland by the 1850s. The development of the
new "Eastern Gap" for shipping in later years along
with changing military technology rendered Fort
York obsolete as a harbour defence by the 1880s.
NAC, RG 9, Militia Records, II, AI, XXXII, P.
Nobelton-Ross Memorandum, 1 August 1871; and
Toronto Harbour and the Defence of the Great Lakes Region
NAC, RG 9, II, AI, CCXXI, Inspector of Artillery
Memorandum, 20 December 1888.
29. A useful military history of the Upper Canadian Rebellion is: Mary Beacock Fryer, Volunteers
and Redcoats, Rebels and Raiders: A Military
History of the Rebellions in Upper Canada
(Toronto, 1987).
30. NAC, RG 8, CCCCXLIX, List of Expenditures, 1837-1838, c. 1839.
31. Two of these shell guns can be seen today
behind the Marine Museum of Upper Canada. For
a discussion of shell guns, see Roger F. Sarty,
Coast Artillery. 1815-1914 (Bloomfield, ON,
1988), 6-9; and David McConnell, British SmoothBore Artillery: A Technological Study to Support
Identification, Acquisition, Restoration, Reproduction, and Interpretation of Artillery at National
Historic Parks in Canada (Ottawa, 1988), 95-102.
32. William F.D. Jervois, Report on the Defence
of Canada and the British Naval Stations in the
Atlantic (London, 1864).
15
33. Canada West was the new name for Upper
Canada after 1841 when Upper and Lower Canada
were joined as the United Province of Canada. In
1867, the United Province was divided into two
provinces, Ontario and Quebec, within the newlycreated Dominion of Canada, which comprised
these provinces plus Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
34. William F.D. Jervois, Report on the Defence
of Canada (Made to the Provincial Government on
the 10th November 1864) (London, 1865).
35. For analyses of Canadian defence planning
against American threats after Confederation, see
the relevant sections in Bourne, Britain and the
Balance of Power; Stephen J. Harris, Canadian
Brass: The Making of a Professional Army, 18601939 (Toronto, 1988); and Richard A. Preston, The
Defence of the Undefended Border: Planning for
War in North America, 1867-1939 (Montreal,
1977).